Turkey has a rich and long history, here are just some of the interesting facts about Turkey:

1.    The Oldest Human Settlement
Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC and is thought to be the oldest, largest and best preserved human settlement in the world. The area overlooks the Konya Plain and is situated south east of the modern day city of Konya. It is estimated that the average population was between five and seven thousand, possibly as high as ten thousand. The town was composed entirely of domestic buildings with inhabitants living in mud brick houses, most of which were accessible through a hole in the ceiling reached by ladders or stairs.

2.    Noah’s Ark
Just a few years ago, a team of evangelical Christian explorers claimed that they had found the remains of Noah’s ark beneath the snow and volcanic debris on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. In 2008, the team claimed to have found seven large wooden compartments buried at 13,000 feet above sea level near the mountain’s peak. They discovered that the radiocarbon-dated wood shows that the ark is about 4,800 years old, which roughly coincides with the time of Noah’s flood as told in the Bible. Of course there are skeptics, however, although the Bible never specifies which peak the vessel supposedly landed on, it does say that the ark landed somewhere in Urartu, an ancient kingdom in eastern Turkey.

3.    The Legend of Troy
Troy was located in Asia Minor, now northwest Anatolia in modern Turkey and is today known as Hisarlık. It is the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the lliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The famous story tells of the Achaeans building a huge wooden horse, posed as a gift to Troy which was used for soldiers to hide in and gain access to the city to find Helen. Troy became a world heritage site in 1998.

4.    Santa Claus is Turkish
Saint Nicholas, also known as Nikolaos of Myra and was born in the city of Patara, a port on the Mediterranean Sea in present day Turkey. The modern city of Demre in the Antalya Province is built near the ruins of the saint’s home town of ancient Myra and attracts many Russian tourists as St. Nicholas is a very popular Orthodox saint. It is said that in Myra the relics of Saint Nicholas each year exuded a clear watery liquid which smells like rose water, canned manna, which is believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers. Saint Nicholas is not the only saint with connections to Turkey. The Virgin Mary’s resting place is said to be near the ancient city of Ephesus and Saint Paul was from Tarsus in the south. Other biblical figures also hail from Turkey, such as the Prohpet Abraham who was born in Şanlıurfa and as mentioned above, Noah may have run his ark aground at Mount Ararat. 

5.    Turkey Created Coins
The world’s first coins were minted by King Alyattes in Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor, which is present day Turkey, around 600 BC. The coins were made from a naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver called electrum. They were marked with a design on one side and with punches on the other. the earliest known hoard of electrum coins was found during the British Museum excavations of the Temple of Ephesus in 1904. 19 coins were found placed in a small pot which had been buried alongside another 74 coins in the foundations of the temple. 

6.    Mosques Galore
Turkey is home to 82,693 mosques, most of which are in the country’s largest city, Istanbul. Istanbul is home to 3,113 mosques and the lowest number can be found in the Tunceli Province which is home to only 117. But mosques are being built all of the time. In fact there was an increase of 7,324 between 2003 and 2013. Mosques are becoming more and more elaborate and intricate in their decoration, quite often adorned with mosaic tiling inside, lush carpets and stained glass windows.

7.    Ancient Wonders
Two of the seven ancient wonders of the world are in Turkey. The Temple of Artemis at the famous ruins of Ephesus near Izmir is a popular draw for tourists in the area. It was first built during the Archaic period during the 8th century and later again during the Hellenistic period. The night that Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC, the temple was destroyed by a lunatic named Herostatus and the temple was again reconstructed by the citizens of Ephesus. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, known as the Tomb of Mausolus in Bodrum, the second of Turkey’s ancient wonders was built between 353 and 350 BC for Mausolus, a satrap of the Persian Empire and his sister-wife Artemisia II of Caria. It was approximately 45 metres high and the four sides were adorned with sculptural reliefs, each created by a different Greek sculptor. The tomb was destroyed by successive earthquakes from the 12th to the 15th century.

8.    The First University in the World
The first known university in the world was founded in Harran, south east Turkey. Harran was a major ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia, close to the modern village of Altınbaşak in the Şanlıurfa Province. The city was a major commercial, cultural and religious centre first inhabited in the Early Bronze Age III. It is believed that the ancient city of Harran was home to the first university in the world and its ruins can still be seen.

9.    Women’s Rights
Turkey was among the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote, even before the United States and the majority of European countries. On February the 6th 1935, the women of Turkey were allowed to vote in national elections for the first time and they were even allowed to stand for office. The reform was part of Atatürk’s efforts to secularise and modernise the new Republic of Turkey. A small percentage of parliamentary seats were set aside for women and today, about a tenth of the Turkish parliament is represented by women.

10.   The First Man To Fly

Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi was a legendary Ottoman aviator of the 17th century and he was believed to have achieved sustained unpowered flight. Travel writer Evilya Çelebi wrote that he first practiced by flying over the pulpit of Okmeydanı with eagle wings but then flew from the very top of the Galata Tower in Istanbul (then Constantinople) and landed in the Doğancılar Square in Üsküdar on the other side of the Bosphorus River. Unfortunately he was seen to be some kind of magician and was sent to Algeria on exile where he later died.